<p>A survey showed that in each of the past 12 months there was one person who was unemployed who worked in all other months. There were also two people who were unemployed for all 12 months. What percentage of the unemployment spells during the year was short-term, and what percentage of the unemployment in a given month was long-term?
a. 75 percent and 33.3 percent
b. 75 percent and 66.7 percent
c. 85.7 percent and 66.7 percent
d. 85.7 percent and 33.3 percent</p>
<p>I chose B but I still do not know if its correct. Anyone know how to do this? I will consider you a genius.</p>
<p>If I am reading this correctly, there were a total of 14 unemployment “spells”: the two who were out all year and then in each month, 1 additional person who was only out that month. So 12/14 or 85.7% of the spells were short term. But in any given month, there were 3 unemployed people: the two who were out of work all year and the one who was just out that month. So 2/3 were long term.</p>
<p>Not loving the question though…where is it from? </p>
<p>This is a completely useless question. What do they mean by short-term and long-term employment? Collegeboard will never phrase a question in this way.</p>
<p>I also agree, this is a pretty poorly-worded question and open to lots of interpretations. For example, “there was one person…” should be phrased as “there was <em>exactly</em> one person…” Also, maybe in month 1, there was someone who was unemployed well before month 1; is that considered long-term? As SATQuantum said, what do short-term and long-term even mean?</p>